Spinoza Today

BOOK THREE, PROP. XIV. If the mind has once been affected by two emotions at the same time, it will, whenever it is afterwards affected by one of the two, be also affected by the other.

BOOK III, PROP. XV. Anything can, accidentally, be the cause of pleasure, pain, or desire.

Corollary.–Simply from the fact that we have regarded a thing with the emotion of pleasure or pain, though that thing be not the efficient cause of the emotion, we can either love or hate it.

Note.–Hence we understand how it may happen, that we love or hate a thing without any cause for our emotion being known to us; merely, as the phrase is, from sympathy or antipathy. We should refer to the same category those objects, which affect us pleasurably or painfully, simply because they resemble other objects which affect us in the same way. This I will show in the next Prop. I am aware that certain authors, who were the first to introduce these terms “sympathy” and “antipathy,” wished to signify thereby some occult qualities in things; nevertheless I think we may be permitted to use the same terms to indicate known or manifest qualities.

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Proposition 15 is a revolution in Western thought concerning the nature of pleasure and desire. Throughout the philosophical tradition there has been a marked tendency to distinguish natural and unnatural forms of pleasure. Take, for example, this representative passage from Epicurus’ Letter to Menoeceus:

We must also reflect that of desires some are natural, others are groundless; and that of the natural some are necessary as well as natural, and some natural only. And of the necessary desires some are necessary if we are to be happy, some if the body is to be rid of uneasiness, some if we are even to live. He who has a clear and certain understanding of these things will direct every preference and aversion toward securing health of body and tranquillity of mind, seeing that this is the sum and end of a blessed life. For the end of all our actions is to be free from pain and fear, and, when once we have attained all this, the tempest of the soul is laid; seeing that the living creature has no need to go in search of something that is lacking, nor to look for anything else by which the good of the soul and of the body will be fulfilled. When we are pained because of the absence of pleasure, then, and then only, do we feel the need of pleasure. Wherefore we call pleasure the alpha and omega of a blessed life. Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting-point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.

The aim is to live only in terms of natural desires or those desires that are inborn. With Spinoza all of this changes. Just as we do not know what a body can do, similarly, we must account for the specific system of affects and desires that characterize a particular body. The most striking examples of this would be masochism and suicide, where a particular form of jouissance and desire is at work, showing just how varied desires and forms of enjoyment can be. Subsequent propositions will show just how well Spinoza is able to account for these sorts of phenomena. We must thus necessarily provide some account of the manner in which this body’s desire is individuated. Deleuze and Guattari praise Freud for having developed an account of desire, of libido, that is no longer shackled to innate objects. This comes out with special clarity in the case of Freud’s Three Essays on the Theory of Sexuality, where it is argued that we are born “polymorphously perverse”. Such a thesis is already at work in Spinoza’s Ethics. Given his own intense engagement with Spinoza, Deleuze would have been well aware of this.

It is also worthwhile to note the strong affinity between proposition 15 and Hume’s theory of association with respect to the formation of subjectivity. Every social theory requires a conception of the body similar to that of Spinoza’s, Hume’s, and Freud’s to account for the formation of socialized subjects or the formation of socially and historically specific affects, percepts, and desires. For instance, why do we begin approaching the world in an “objectified” fashion in the 17th century, seeing things as objects of quantification and dispassionate scientific investigation? What accounts for this sudden shift in how things are perceived? Here questions of individuation emerge that are necessarily bound up with questions of changes in production that took place with respect to the emergence of capitalism. The historical explanation, however, is not sufficient as we must presuppose a certain malleability of the body to determine how it is possible for perception to be transformed in this way, shifting from what Heidegger called the “ready-to-hand” of the Feudal world, to the “present-at-hand” of products under capitalistic production. In particular, we would have to focus on what Marx describes as “alienation” from the object of production in the Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844, as a non-phenomenological condition for the possibility of the phenomenology of the scientific gaze or attitude. This separation from the object produced serves as a historical a priori condition of the scientific gaze by rendering us indifferent to the use-value of the object for usqua producer. One need only think of the difference between our phenomenological attitude towards food that we produce in a restauraunt for customers (for those who have been “fortunate” to work in food service), compared to our attitude towards food we produce for ourselves. In the former case the food becomes an “inert” thing, such that our interest in it is subtracted. The object comes to be experienced as “present-at-hand”, just as a doctor or nurse sees a human body as a machine, rather than another person with whom they share interpersonal bonds. This “indifference” towards the object was also reflected in an indifference to subjects, where heirarchical social identities began to disappear and we came to conceive ourselves as individuals pursuing self-interest. Perhaps more on that another time, I’m off to dinner at the anthropologists house.

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12 Responses to “Spinoza Today”

Proposition 15 does indeed resonate. Care to expand some on how you envision hierarchical social identities dissolving under capitalism? I’m most curious about this line: “This “indifference” towards the object was also reflected in an indifference to subjects, where heirarchical social identities began to disappear and we came to conceive ourselves as individuals pursuing self-interest.”

I’m unsure whether you would welcome commentary on the ways in which your recent writings are touching on some of the issues I often work on. I offer this comment tentatively – if it draws you into directions you’re not interested in going, by all means disregard.

On your comment here:

The historical explanation, however, is not sufficient as we must presuppose a certain malleability of the body to determine how it is possible for perception to be transformed in this way

This is essentially what I was trying to gesture toward in the Sociology and Psychology and Siren’s Song posts from our conversation some time back – whether I was able to express the point clearly in those posts or not.

I think you’re correct that historical explanations tend to presuppose such things. A critical theory, though, specifically cannot presuppose them, but must instead thematise why it become possible for us to learn that such a property of bodies exists. One question then becomes: has such a property (malleability, to take the example highlighted in this post) always existed in the same way, but something has shifted to make it easier for us to perceive that this is the case? Or, has something shifted in our practice of ourselves as bodily creatures, such that things appear as they are, and the concept has emerged because we have begun to practice ourselves anew?

In the former, the practical reality is taken to be the same for present and past, but our concepts have suddenly mysteriously become more adequate to that reality. In the latter case, the concept applies across time only as a potential – applied to past history, such a concept would be only a conceptual abstraction – while the concept expresses and is part of the practical reality of the present moment in time. The former, I think, binds us to a kind of subject-object dualism and essentialism, while the latter does not… The latter also ties analysis more closely to the potential for practical transformations.

You would know, of course, that a great deal of my work centres on the issue of how we come (collectively) to practice indifference to the particular qualities of subjects and objects, and that I take such practical indifference to find expression in certain kinds of abstractions – and thus to render those abstractions “real” – where the abstract concept is a plausible characterisation of how we practice indifference to particular qualitative characteristics of subjects and objects (as well as practicing a world divided into subjects and objects…) in least a slice of our collective lives.

I think you’re correct that historical explanations tend to presuppose such things. A critical theory, though, specifically cannot presuppose them, but must instead thematise why it become possible for us to learn that such a property of bodies exists. One question then becomes: has such a property (malleability, to take the example highlighted in this post) always existed in the same way, but something has shifted to make it easier for us to perceive that this is the case? Or, has something shifted in our practice of ourselves as bodily creatures, such that things appear as they are, and the concept has emerged because we have begun to practice ourselves anew?

I think these are two distinct questions. On the one hand there’s the ontological question of whether bodies are malleable in this way and in just what ways, by what mechanisms, etc., they’re malleable. I would say yes, they are malleable in this way and this would be my interest here. On the other hand, there are the socio-epistemic questions of how we became aware of this. To this I would say that clearly this hasn’t always been obvious. Negri does a lot of interesting work on the historical, economic, and political questions that were a condition for the possibility of Spinoza’s materialism. He doesn’t develop what I here develop in terms of affects, but I think the analysis could be extended. The same would hold for someone like Hume. I am not suggesting that Negri’s analysis is the correct analysis, but it’s a good start.

Proposition 15 does indeed resonate. Care to expand some on how you envision hierarchical social identities dissolving under capitalism? I’m most curious about this line: “This “indifference” towards the object was also reflected in an indifference to subjects, where heirarchical social identities began to disappear and we came to conceive ourselves as individuals pursuing self-interest.”

A woman, child, gay man, untouchable, etc., can all pluck chickens and put bolts on a screw with equal effectiveness in a factory setting. The interesting feature of the emergence of capital is that it provides a universal metric for measuring human beings: the amount that they are capable of producing within an hour. As a result of this qualitative distinctions among different groups begin to disappear and each individual comes to be counted as one abstractly. During this time we also witness the fall of monarchies and the shift to democracies. I take it that the emergence of capital and how it came to conceive labor in abstract terms was an a priori condition for this shift. People under this system become “in-different-iated” allowing everyone to count as one, rather than counting folk according to qualitative differences (usually supported by theology).

You point out that Spinoza moves the locus pleasure/pain from an intrinsic property of objects to an accidental association of object with emotion. He speaks of “sympathy” between object and emotion. So there is a convergence of flows: objects meet desires, and the resulting resonances are both unpredictable and preconscious. If the objects themselves are neutral, then presumably desire “pulls” the object into sympathy, or inscribes the object with sympathetic markings as the object crosses the desire’s trajectory. But if another object comes along that shares properties with an object that had set up resonance with pleasure, then by association this second object seems imbued with intrinsically pleasurable properties. There is no reference to the self creating a kind of sympathetic milieu enshrining an object or its properties, and then embedding that object and ones like it within the pleasure milieu through some act of will or preference. Though I presume that could happen later, once consciousness starts contemplating and abstracting the desirabilities of the object.

Does the neutral objectification of both empiricism and capitalism make possible the separation of desirability from the object which Spinoza here exposes? So the alienation is a kind of nostalgia for the world of desirable objects. This separation of object from pleasure also makes possible the manipulation of pleasurable sympathy, creating sympathetic associations between product and other objects that induce pleasure in at least a sizable sector of the consuming public. But maybe you’ll go there later.

Again, I’m struck by the resonances between the points you make here, and some of the things we’ve occasionally discussed in other contexts:

A woman, child, gay man, untouchable, etc., can all pluck chickens and put bolts on a screw with equal effectiveness in a factory setting. The interesting feature of the emergence of capital is that it provides a universal metric for measuring human beings: the amount that they are capable of producing within an hour. As a result of this qualitative distinctions among different groups begin to disappear and each individual comes to be counted as one abstractly. During this time we also witness the fall of monarchies and the shift to democracies. I take it that the emergence of capital and how it came to conceive labor in abstract terms was an a priori condition for this shift. People under this system become “in-different-iated” allowing everyone to count as one, rather than counting folk according to qualitative differences (usually supported by theology).

You might be particularly interested in Postone’s work, particularly the chapter on abstract time, in relation to these issues. It operates at a much higher level of theoretical sophistication than someone like Negri does, although I’d have some quibbles with the historical material (and, for that matter, with the theoretical framework) – but it’s still a standout theoretical work, with an exceptional interpretation of Marx.

The way you’re tackling the issue here – looking at things like the introduction of factory production – is a normal way “in” to this problematic. What I’ve been playing around with in my own work is the question of whether this might be too concrete – or, more accurately, whether these sorts of concrete developments, which undoubtedly have profound impacts, are developments that, from this end of history, we can now see as particular historical instantiations of a pattern that has proven able to become divorced from the specific circumstances that gave rise to it. Understanding this pattern can then perhaps cast additional light on the forms of perception and thought – the forms of experience and practice of self and of intersubjectivity – related to the sorts of malleability and indifference you reference above. None of which takes away from the significance of exploring these same issues on the ground, and in more particular and specified historical circumstances.

The point was not that Negri is unsophisticated, only that Postone’s work operates at a very unusual level – and is known for this. I’ve been meaning to reference his work for some time in relation to past discussions of anti-Semitism, where he’s also written some interesting pieces that might be of interest, given other materials you often reference on this issue – it just kept slipping my mind when I came to write.

I gather that my interventions have lately been unwelcome – which is unfortunate, as your work is touching on problems that interest me a great deal, and I would value a critical exchange.

No, I’m just working on other questions more focused on the mechanics of these subjectifying processes than the historical questions you’re posing, that’s all. You do have to admit, though, that your choice of words with regard to Negri wasn’t the best.

Given the sorts of things I say about Adorno, Benjamin and other theorists on whom I rely heavily, Negri gets off light… More seriously, my comment would probably make more sense in the context of the work I was citing – it’s just an exceptionally complex piece of theory (which of course isn’t without its problems – some of which Negri might address more adequately). I don’t take it as an insult to a theorist to point out that their work isn’t operating on a level of abstraction at which it’s not seeking to operate – but these differences may be salient for which texts can best cast light on particular kinds of questions.

I see an analysis of the mechanics of subjectifying processes as a hole in my own work – I always have. And I see it as an unfortunate one, in that it doesn’t derive from any deliberate judgment that such issues are less important than what I have concentrated on: I’ve thought for a very long time that such an analysis was a high priority. But – as I had been stumbling to indicate in some of the earlier posts I referenced above – my focus has been more one-sided than I would have liked, as a kind of accidental byproduct of how I initially encountered these questions and the early opportunities I had to work on them.

My impulse – which I realise may be specific to me – is that ultimately such things are best thought in tandem, and in their tension – which is why I have raised them here. I don’t view the questions as other, if this makes sense, and therefore haven’t been trying to sidetrack (even if this has been the effect) but to explore how these issues might interpenetrate.

Yes but writing is a linear project– as is also often the case with thought –that sometimes requires focusing on one thing at the expense of the other for a moment. Or to put it in Hegelese, sometimes it’s necessary to tarry with the thing and allow it to develop itself of its own accord. It can’t all be done at once or in the same breath.